Daddio (film): A nice and heartwarming film that has a ton of truth in it

I watched this movie without knowing anything about it and it would probably be better if you watched it - if you so choose - without knowing anything either. What makes this film special to me is that the entertainment value is driven entirely by the dialogue since almost nothing takes place outside of the taxi cab where the film's only two characters engage with one another.

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The story is a girl gets into a taxi and ends up having a conversation with her driver. This is quite a common situation in taxis as the drivers tend to be quite talkative, sometime to the point of annoyance. Clark (Sean Penn) gets his last fare of the night before heading home for the day and the two of them have a great amount to talk about once they end up getting stuck in traffic because of an accident.

Now here is something that really struck me about this movie and especially that I enjoyed it. I have seen attempts at "dialogue driven" films in the past, some of which were actually applauded by critics such as Before Sunrise and I absolutely hated them. I didn't enjoy that a film consisted of two people talking to one another and nothing else. The worst example of this sort of film is one that has Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder in it called Destination Wedding. Go ahead and look that film up one day. It is cringe and extremely bad. I don't know what Reeves was attempting to do here but perhaps he wanted to try his hand at serious acting in a love story but shouldn't have done that.

Back to Daddio though: The conversations that the two of them have in the cab are really engaging and both of them make some very valid points throughout. Much of what they talk about is in relation to the changing dynamics of modern-day relationships and how they aren't really changing for the better. I think that for anyone that has lived in both the digital and non-digital age can relate to a lot of what they are talking about especially if you find yourself in a less-than-perfect relationship at some point in time or another.

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The acting chemistry between Penn and co-star Dakota Jonson is really good and that is always surprising to me when Sean Penn is involved since he has a well-deserved reputation in the film world for being an absolute terror to work with. I think that since Johnson was a producer on the show might have stepped him down a notch as far as his usual arrogance is concerned because they both do really well in this. I don 'think that the film was actually meant to be a big earner and unless Penn demanded crazy money for his time, there wouldn't have been a great deal of costs associated with making the film which is good because during it's very limited theatrical released it made less than $500,000. When you factor in that the cinemas themselves take half of this, they definitely lost money.

There's not much reason to show any more images of this film because almost the entire thing takes place inside the taxi and while that would normally bore the hell out of me, I genuinely enjoyed this movie.

Should I watch it?

I think so yes. But if you are the type of person that needs explosions and transformers to be running around in a CGI environment to be entertained then this will bore you quite quickly. Once you get invested in the characters (both of them!) you will find that the things they talk about are really important issues and there is some fantastic advice and analysis of the human condition that is taking place throughout the usual around 90 minute runtime. I was surprised that I liked it as much as I did and I think most people will come to the same conclusion.

_{the only way to legally watch this film is to see it in the few theaters that it is currently in, which is unlikely unless you live in a very populated part of USA, or to rent it from almost any streaming service such as Apple and Amazon.}